Amor Mundi

Get Back to Laboring

Roger Berkowitz
Governments and businesses are telling people to get back to work. Lyndsey Stonebridge notes that what what they really are saying is to get back to the business of laboring. The distinction between work and labor is central to Hannah Arendt’s thinking about the human condition.

Amor Mundi Podcast, Episode 1: Martin Gurri

The Hannah Arendt Center presents the Amor Mundi Podcast. This episode, Roger Berkowitz talks with Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.

Communities of Trust

Roger Berkowitz
In a Senate hearing this week, Senator Rand Paul called for humility and warned that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not the “end all” in predicting the course of the Coronavirus. In response, Dr. Fauci reminded Senator Paul—who is also a doctor—that he had never made himself to be an “end all.” “I am a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence...

Podcast in Print: Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies

A transcript of the open remarks from the Amor Mundi Podcast episode 10: “Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies.” It features the Arendt Center’s founder and director, Roger Berkowitz, and Jonas Kunz, cofounder of the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy through Sortition giving a talk and leading a discussion over Zoom.

Federalism

Roger Berkowitz
As the President vacillates between claiming absolute powers and empowering the states, there is a renewed interest in the American principle of federalism. The appeal to the principle of federalism and the multiplication of powers throughout the United States Constitutional system is precisely the kind of thinking Hannah Arendt celebrated as the true innovation of the United States Constitution.

Loneliness and the Loss of the Common World

Roger Berkowitz
Until recently, I had not left my apartment for 33 days. I did not touch another human being—not even the members of my family with whom I live—for  even longer. The virus has been mild in my case. It is nearly gone. Physically, I am fine. I am one of the lucky ones; I never had to make a decision whether to go to a hospital, alone, not knowing whether I would see family and friends ever again.

What We Are Reading:
Viral Extremities

Roger Berkowitz
Kristian Blickle of the Federal Reserve Board of New York has published a working paper, “Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933.” As described by Quint Forgey, Blickle’s paper “concludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influenza pandemic “profoundly shaped German society” in subsequent years and contributed to the strengthening of the Nazi Party.”

Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies

This is episode 10, “Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz and Jonas Kunz, co-founder of the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy Through Sortition, giving a talk and leading a discussion over Zoom. The talk was organized by Lawrence Davis-Hollander and the Scoville Memorial Library and took place on Saturday, April 18, 2020.

Radical Racial Imaginations

Roger Berkowitz
A bit over a year ago I attended a symposium on  “Black Intellectuals & The Condition of the Culture” at Skidmore College, featuring Margo Jefferson, Darryl Pinckney, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Orlando Patterson and John McWhorter. The conversations were free and provocative and at times brilliant. Now the transcripts of the symposium have been published by SALMAGUNDI.